Best album on NME Albums of 2004 List (Peak Landfill Era?)

Upper reaches were a tumbleweed strewn wasteland (I do still play Smile from time to time) but then a small nugget of albums I loved and still enjoy:
44. Wilco – A Ghost Is Born
...
46. Sufjan Stevens – Seven Swans
47. The Shins – Chutes Too Narrow

I listened to Destroy Rock 'n' Roll recently and enjoyed it as much as ever, so I'll be voting for that.

That NME list is really weird, a LOT of really classic indie mainstays on the ILX list that don't even dent the NME one. I mean, no Funeral, no, Madvillainy, no Sung Tongs, no Blueberry Boat, no Anniemal...but we totally can find room for 'Antics'

This was before Pitchfork's complete domination of the indie-crit landscape though (although Funeral was probably the beginning of that, it wasn't released here until 2005). A lot of the records you mention had and still have no cultural context or impact over here at all. If you referred to Blueberry Boat as a "classic indie mainstay" to a British person you'd get a look of blank incomprehension at best. Whereas Interpol actually sold records here and would be played in indie clubs across the country - that karaoke Curtis routine actually made sense against the backdrop of British music.

It's easy to forget now how far apart the UK and US used to be musically - you go back four years to 2000 or so and they were MILES apart in almost every way.

The ILM list is notably full of sounds and artists who were dismissed as irrelevant ILM hobbyhorses and then went on to become massive. (Not Kanye obviously, he was always massive, and not Big & Rich or the United States of Electronica, who really WERE irrelevant ILM hobbyhorses).

tbf no one in america actually remembers blueberry boat

Struggled for days in choosing between voting for College Dropout or BWPS. Ultimately went for Kanye.

is the Futureheads album the one with their dreadful cover of "Hounds of Love" on it? more than a decade later I'm still annoyed about that, and how unaccountably successful it was

The single peaked at #8 on the UK charts in its first week[10] and was named Best Single of 2005 by NME.[citation needed] In October 2011, NME placed it at number 89 on its list "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years".[11]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/96/The_Futureheads_Hounds_of_Love_single_cover.jpg

89 Hounds Of Love
Mixing barbershop harmonies with short, sharp snaps of post-punk guitar riffing in post-industrial Northern Britain was pretty darn special, but it was this, the Futureheads’ re-imagining of Kate Bush’s 1985 smasher that would prove their most widely loved track. Caught between Ross Millard’s dewy lead vocal, the break-neck drum track and the very real mutt-ish backing harmonies, this track felt like you were taking off with the world beneath your feet. The first flushes of love coming at you as buildings collapse, mountains crash in the background but you walk along, zombie-like oblivious to it all. In fact, it felt like the hounds of love really were coming for you. (PE)

Read more at http://www.nme.com/list/150-best-tracks-of-the-past-15-years/248648#Cyzloc8SaMMLx5js.99

there is so much that it weird about this - is mixing barbershop harmonies with short, sharp of post-punk guitar riffing in post-industrial Northern Britain any more "pretty darn special" than mixing barbershop harmonies with short, sharp of post-punk guitar riffing in any other part of the world? I have no idea what they mean by "the very real mutt-ish backing harmonies" either

Lesson re. Futureheads, System of a Down, Deftones; always beware of whatever the media like to sell as the 'good part' of chosen genre/era/scene

I like System of a Down and Deftones ok, though I'm not really a metal fan - I'm still confused as to what marked the Futureheads out from their peers to the extent that they were touted by some as the acceptable face of '00s indie. but I think I always resented them as XTC were/are one of my favourite bands, and everyone at the time seemed to go on about how the Futureheads sounded like XTC, and they... did not live up to that comparison imo

I still have a hell of a lot of time for that first Futureheads LP. The 'Hounds of Love' cover was always my least favourite track on there, but if it's still irking the purists over a decade later I can only see that as a good thing.

the original is such an amazing track and the cover just sounds so drab and cloddish in comparison - I feel like every decent sized UK provincial town in the early 2000s probably had around half a dozen indie bands who could have bashed out a version of Hounds Of Love that sounded exactly as good as the Futureheads rendition - but you're right, it *is* a silly thing to be irked about.

'The City Is Here For You To Use' was always their best song.

The single peaked at #8 on the UK charts in its first week[10] and was named Best Single of 2005 by NME.[I find that very hard to believe] In October 2011, NME placed it at number 89 on its list "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years".[11]

fixed, a bit

The first Futureheads album is still pretty amazing. Carnival Kids is the best track.

Actually, the best track is probably pretty clearly Decent Days and Nights. That's still a pretty dizzying mix of riffs, harmonies and switching meters.

tbf no one in america actually remembers blueberry boat

― qual, Sunday, August 14, 2016 10:15 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah how tf did blueberry boat get forgotten :( i hadn't listened to it in years until recently. it's amazing. why didn't it have legs? seems like if you weren't around in 2004/2005, the fiery furnaces may as well not have existed.

I have no idea what they mean by "the very real mutt-ish backing harmonies" either

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cLrPnhOwwso/UBQJ8jAld5I/AAAAAAAAIqY/RZUtLW_4aLU/s1600/R+Mutt.jpg

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Lol @ self-selecting voter base.

bloody hell at the amount of votes. I thought there would be 15-20 at most

Peak landfill was surely 2006-2007?

The Fratellis, The Pigeon Detectives, Kate Nash, The Wombats, The View, Reverend and the Makers, Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong etc.

I mean at least The Futureheads, Bloc Party, Maximo Park, Franz Ferdinand et. al. had one good album in 'em, the above artists didn't even have one.

Oh god, and the absolute horror that was Scouting For Girls... I mean, fucks sake...

I take it they realized nobody gave a shit about no-name British indie bands and stopped hyping them around 2010 or so?

Peak landfill was surely 2006-2007?

The Fratellis, The Pigeon Detectives, Kate Nash, The Wombats, The View, Reverend and the Makers, Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong etc.

― the hair - it's lost its energy (Turrican), Friday, 19 August 2016 16:45 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yup
I'd count Ordinary Boys too but they're in this poll
Poor the Dears, they were ok iirc

I think you meant to say: poor dears

I take it they realized nobody gave a shit about no-name British indie bands and stopped hyping them around 2010 or so?

― Mr. Snrub, Saturday, August 20, 2016 12:40 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Basically, a synthpop revival happened.

But I'm not surprised at all that alternative rock/"guitar music" or whatever you want to call it basically died in the UK circa 2007-2008, because by that point record companies were just signing shit bands in large quantities. If the bands were all putting out records of the calibre of Silent Alarm or Franz Ferdinand or A Certain Trigger, then it wouldn't be a problem, but they just weren't. They weren't good enough. It was just an oversaturation of drivel and people naturally got fed up. It seemed like most of the bands involved in that wave of 2002-2005 were struggling to follow-up their debut records, CD's were out on their arse, and record companies got desperate.

There's a whole arc to that last era of UK alternative rock/"guitar music" which begins with The Libertines' Up The Bracket in 2002, peaks around 2004-2005, and ends dying on its arse with Scouting For Girls, The Pigeon Detectives and the fucking Hoosiers.

Wasn't the synthpop revival already there in the early 00s?

It was a bit of a slow-build throughout the decade. I guess at the very beginning of the decade there was Ladytron and Mesh, later joined by Client and The Knife by '03 (as well as Goldfrapp in their Black Cherry-era) ... but by '09 synthpop was back in a way it hadn't been for long, long time.

seem to recall the ordinary boys (and the killers too) were somewhat derided by srs ~guitar music~ types for being a bit too pop, a critical tendency which had signficantly diminished by the landfill era, so i guess that makes the ordinary boys proto-landfill

and the guy from the ordinary boys went on big brother or some other shitty tv show like that.

he was on the celebrity version of that channel 4 First Dates show the other week! apparently he now writes songs for Cher and Olly Murs

Gavin & Stacey seemed to help the career of landfill indie bands. They were always being played on it

Yeah, Preston was on Celebrity Big Brother. The thing was, at the time that he was on Celebrity Big Brother I had not heard one single note of The Ordinary Boys' music. I don't recall any Ordinary Boys tracks being played on nights out, and I don't remember their videos really getting any airplay on MTV2 or whatever. I don't remember much about them, apart from seeing their CD in a rack in a record shop while I was buying something else. I always assumed that Preston having to go on Celebrity Big Brother meant he'd either do anything for five minutes of fame or his band was wank, therefore I needn't bother. When I finally heard an Ordinary Boys track many, many years later, it turned out I was right on both counts. I hadn't missed anything. If Preston hadn't gone on Celebrity Big Brother, his band would have been so incredibly easy to ignore.

The Ordinary Boys had some airplay & hits before CBB . They supported Paul Weller before CBB.

Yeah, but they were being 'shown the door' pretty much, but "Boys will be boys" got back in the chart while he was in, and they got a bit longer to live.

was that a cover of the hit by 'A Bunch Of Wally's' ? ;)

I since found out that The Ordinary Boys were one of those bands that deliberately changed their name/sound/image in order to jump on the bandwagon. They were a hardcore band called Next In Line beforehand.

See also: The Bravery.
See also also: Kaiser Chiefs (formerly Parva)

Also "Modern Romance", three style changes at least.

See also also: Kill The Arcade/Wolf Am I/Brother/Viva Brother/Lovelife

I think a lot of britpop bands had started off in another life too. Like Travis and that Scottish band who did that terrible "smile" song that was a huge hit but started off as a grunge band.

Morrissey was a supporter of The Ordinary Boys for a while (they were named after one of his songs), put them on a compilation he made but after Big Brother he seemed to change his mind.

Gavin & Stacey seemed to help the career of landfill indie bands. They were always being played on it

Benchmark set in very first episode

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007j8w4/segments

Landfill comedy with landfill actors